The gold/silver ratio has risen to its highest level in roughly a quarter century, with silver suffering from both weakness in precious metals lately but also dragged down by pessimism about base metals. The ratio measures how many ounces of silver it takes to buy an ounce of gold. When the number is rising, this reflects silver is underperforming relative to gold. Full Story

Let’s take an in-day snapshot of gold vs. several key competitors (for your investment dollars/euros/yen, etc.) and check the progress in turning the macro from risk ‘on’ to risk ‘off’, cyclical to counter-cyclical. Gold/Commodities motors along above the SMA 200. The move has been hysterical, and thus looks impulsive. That could mean something as we look back in hindsight one day. Full Story

Phase changes generally build slowly and continue for a long time because once people form an opinion it requires overwhelming evidence to reverse it. With this shift from light to dark just getting started, it’s reasonable to expect a lot more angst from the world’s headline writers. So strap in. And buy gold. Full Story

The stock market has been rising, GDP has been rising, and the rate of unemployment has been steadily dropping since the Republicans took office, however, as good as news as this is, something sinister has been continuing to unfold behind the scenes. In all likelihood, you are intensely aware of what I am referring to, especially if you are the one who does, or participates in the majority of the shopping for your household. Full Story

The major gold miners’ stocks remain mired in universal bearishness, largely left for dead. They are just wrapping up their third-quarter earnings season, which proved challenging. Lower gold prices cut deeply into cash flows and profits, and production-growth struggles persisted. But these elite companies did hold the line on costs, portending soaring earnings as gold recovers. Their absurdly-cheap stock prices aren’t justified. Full Story

Bill Murphy of GATA.org returns to the show with fresh insights on the PMs rally.A new precedent was set within the Central Bank realm this week with the Bank of England refusing to honor its custodial arrangement.The BOA refused to return 14 tonnes of gold held on behalf of Venezuela (MaCleod, Goldmoney, 2018). Full Story

Have you heard about the Everything Bubble? According to this view, virtually all financial assets are overvalued. So gold must be underpriced, right? We invite you to read our today’s article which compares the yellow metal to other assets and find out how gold presents itself. Relatively. Full Story

Martin Feldstein, who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors under President Reagan and is currently a Harvard professor, wrote an extraordinary editorial in the Wall Street Journal in which he strongly advocated that the Federal Reserve pursue policies that would: 1) continue to raise interest rates; and 2) thereby pop asset bubbles in the stock and commercial real estate markets; 3) which would cause an estimated $9+ trillion in investor losses; 4) possibly lead to another recession and the accompanying major job losses; and 5) would be followed by forcing interest rates down again to near historic lows. Full Story

The price of gold tested support of $1,200 an ounce on Monday as the U.S. dollar strengthened to a 16-month high, propelled by expectations of additional interest rate hikes. A stronger greenback, remember, weighs on gold as well as a number of other commodities, including oil, since they’re priced in dollars. I’ve inverted the dollar’s values in the chart below so it’s easier to see this relationship. Full Story

Rob Kirby of Kirby Analytics sees extreme risks ahead for the financial markets via a shattered US accounting system.The missing $21 trillion dollars (size of US National Debt) in government funds, is possibly held by the exchange stabilization fund (PPT).One likely use for the missing funds could involve the purchase of new US Bond issuance's, given the few foreign purchases of US debt. Full Story

Silver is necessary for military, computer and medical applications. Investors often prefer silver bullion and coins because they don’t trust government, the Deep State or the Federal Reserve to protect the value of currencies. Investor demand for silver will rise as central banks and politicians lose credibility. Expanding wars will increase demand for silver. Rising energy prices will escalate mining costs. The price of silver has little downside risk and considerable upward potential, perhaps to triple digits within a few years. Full Story

Before we look at tonight's charts I would like to take a minute to discuss trading the three X leveraged etf’s. Leveraged etf’s aren’t for everyone as they can be very volatile. These instruments are for those that can take a bigger risk and still come out OK when they go against you. For the average investor a 1 X leveraged etf is all they can handle and that should be fine. When you start playing with the 2 X and 3 X leveraged etf’s your risk factor goes up very fast. Full Story

There were several developments in the gold market last week. First, we heard of another trader who has pleaded guilty to “manipulating” the metals market. And, everyone is up in arms again about how gold was manipulated to drop from $1,921 to $1,040 during 2011-2015. Full Story

To sum up, we provided you with an update on the recent WGC’s publications. The most important report concerns China. Actually, it is one of the most important questions in our times. So far, the Chinese authorities have postponed the inevitable slowdown. But it will arrive one day. Given the economy’s massive leverage, the growth recession is likely to cause a financial crisis, which would hit the whole world. Gold should shine, then. Full Story

Currently, some market watchers have begun to openly question whether the bull market in stocks has finally come to an end. They certainly have cause to worry. Valuations are frothy after a record run-up in the last few years. Bond yields across the yield curve are rising sharply, as the Fed Funds Rate breaks into territory not seen since before the market crash of 2008. Much higher costs of capital are already putting pressure on rate-sensitive industries such as housing and autos. Full Story

It may not be enough to reverse the momentum or flip the downtrend, but another Spec short squeeze is coming. Of that, you can be certain. And how do we know this? Because the COMEX is a rigged casino! The market-making Banks have monopolistic control of the proceedings, and this grants them almost unlimited power to rig results in their favor. To the point, Speculators (primarily managed money, hedge funds and trading funds) are often led into extreme positions only to be routinely wrong-footed and fleeced by The Banks. Full Story

As part of Merk's in-house research we regularly evaluate a consistent set of charts covering the economy, equities, fixed income, commodities and currencies. The aim is to keep our eyes open and to look through the noise of the headlines, avoiding the distractions of sensationalized click-bait. In sharing this content, we offer a cross-check to your own thinking and aim to add value to your own process. Full Story

Nothing much came of this. Oil prices stabilized and started to rise, and the drillers went back to borrowing and pumping. The price of oil eventually rose to a hugely profitable $76/bbl, turning America’s oil patch back into a “miracle” destined to make us energy independent for eternity. And energy junk bonds were once again safe for widows and orphans. Full Story

Crude’s price fluctuations are a circus act that I’ve watched with diminishing interest over the years. It’s easy enough to predict short-term swings with sufficient accuracy to make money at it, as Rick’s Picks subscribers who traded NYMEX futures and energy ETFs yesterday would be happy to attest. But paying diligent attention to the constant barrage of supply-and-demand spin that drives the big moves could make a guru’s head spin. On some days, the Saudi princes seem out-of-sync with their own PR flacks, promising plenty of oil when their gallimaufry of useful idiots are spreading a ‘tightening’ story like some strain of flu. Full Story

So far, the “traditional Thanksgiving rally” in the US stock market looks more like a rancid Thanksgiving turkey that belongs in the trash can. Many investors appear to have bought the US stock market when it was peaking mainly because of their enthusiasm for President Trump. They forgot about the business cycle and the Fed and are now paying a heavy price for that folly. Full Story

At the recent London Bullion Market Association annual conference, the consensus opinion on the gold price for 2019 among 682 industry delegates was $1532 per ounce. The LBMA offers its opinion annually and it usually falls on the conservative side of the ledger. So its consensus opinion of an average price more than 25% higher than the trading range at the time came as a surprise. Full Story

We define inflation as the counterfeiting of credit. Legitimate credit has four criteria. Most of the focus is on the latter two: the borrower has both the means and intent to repay. Did Republic have the means to repay? They had a good business for 38 years, so we will assume yes. Did they have the intent? Well, unless this was a simple theft and theft by the owners, then we have to answer yes again (with one quibble which we will get to, in a moment). Full Story

This is a problem for the yellow metal. We mean, of course, the divergent path of interest rates in 2019, as the market has already priced in a 76% probability that the committee will raise the federal funds rate to a range of 2.25% to 2.5% at its meeting in December 2018. But when it comes to the next year, the Fed forecasts three hikes, while the market expects only two hikes. Full Story

In what has already been a very interesting week, we’ve witnessed distractions galore. Allegations of election fraud by pretty much everyone except the people who should be winning some of these elections if Americans truly wanted a different future. We already digress. Cognitive dissonance is fully on display. Just below the surface has been the buzz about DeutscheBank – probably the biggest elephant in the room right now. Full Story

What’s happening? The short answer is “time.” Nothing – long-distance runner, living organism or economic trend – continues in one direction forever because the longer the journey the more imbalances accumulate. In a runner these manifest as muscle cramps and shortness of breath. In an economy you get soaring debt, rising inflation, labor shortages and overpriced assets. Full Story

Celebrated value investor Benjamin Graham, who mentored a young Warren Buffett, liked to say that the market is a voting machine in the short term, a weighing machine in the long term. Last week the market voted to reward stocks in the aftermath of the midterm elections, which gave Democrats control of the House and left the Senate in the hands of Republicans. This all but guarantees that gridlock will be the status quo in Washington, at least for the next two years. Full Story

The gold price was sold quietly lower until around noon China Standard Time on their Friday. It crawled quietly higher from there until a few minutes after the London open -- and then it crawled equally quietly lower until the COMEX open. Then the spoofing and algo spinning began -- and the low tick of the day came around 12:15 p.m. in New York. It crept a few dollars higher from there until around 2:30 p.m. in the thinly-traded after-hours market -- and didn't do much after that. Full Story

It is telling that CFTC investigators spent five years investigating silver market manipulation, four of them during the time that Mr. Edmonds and his accomplices were operating with impunity at JPMorgan Chase. Yet that investigation was closed without single banker being charged with wrongdoing, to the dismay of silver and gold market whistle-blowers everywhere. Full Story

The best performing metal this week was palladium, down 0.17 percent as hedge funds boosted their net bullish position to an eight-month high. October was a stellar month for gold after several months of losses. Holdings in gold-backed ETFs rose globally by 16.5 tonnes as the yellow metal benefitted from flight-to-safety investment flows tracking global stock markets, writes Financial Express. The month also marked the first in four of positive global inflows for gold-backed ETFs, as the bullion price rose 2.3 percent. Full Story

Here are two long-term charts illustrating the annual rate at which gold is extracted from the ground. The second of these charts shows why mine production can be ignored when trying to understand what happened to the gold price over the preceding few years or figure out what’s likely to happen to the gold price over the next few years. Full Story

We are getting ahead of ourselves here. Gold does not circulate as money – yet. It might never do so. Perhaps the end of government currency, fiat money imposed on us by government laws, may never be replaced by what for millennia has been the people’s money, gold. Do we even wish it? Given what we have to do to get there, probably not. Full Story

Today there are markets that have been in multi-year bear markets. Using the term bear market may be an overstatement, as even long-term bears have bull and bear moves within them. Two markets that come to mind are China’s Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSEC) and the Tokyo Nikkei Dow (TKN). The SSEC topped back in October 2007. Eleven years later the SSEC remains down 57% from that top. That is despite a strong bull run-up in 2014–2015. Full Story

Summing up, the outlook remains strongly bearish for the precious metals sector and the new long-term and short-term sell signals confirm it. There is a huge opportunity in taking advantage of the upcoming slide and then taking on big positions close to the final bottom, when others will be too scared to do so. It seems that another big decline in gold, silver and mining stocks has just begun and that the huge profits on our short positions will become enormous shortly. Full Story

The result: A future of unpleasant surprises, in which governments are constantly saying “Oops, there’s this huge new expense that no one could have foreseen, and we’re all going to have to tighten our belts to cover it, sorry about the bad roads and closed libraries” – or – “Oops, there’s a huge unforeseen expense and we’re going to have to create a trillion new dollars to cover it, sorry about the inflation.” Full Story

While the government agencies and economists continue to publish strong GDP figures, they seem to overlook how much debt it took to produce that growth. Or should I say, the “supposed growth.” The days of adding one dollar of debt to get one dollar of GDP growth have been long gone for more than 40 years. And, as global debt has increased, it has forced governments to lower interest rates. Full Story

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